About Me

I'm just me - a solitary wanderer who trekked across much of the world and recently retired to a small farm in the Ozarks.
My checkered past includes time spent as an Army officer, high school teacher and principal, real estate broker, child protection worker and administrator, and social worker with the U.S. military.
Over the years I have resided in a variety of places including Missouri, Virginia, Okinawa, Kansas, Kentucky, and Arizona. I have also traveled to Germany, Mexico, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Great Britain, Belize, Guatemala, Taiwan, Guam, South Korea, Vietnam, and numerous islands in the Caribbean - including Cuba.
I have ridden in a Russian ambulance, hitch-hiked across Moscow late at night, fought an ostrich, celebrated New Year's at a street party in Hanoi, and bicycled across the Caribbean. My travels have taken me to Ground Zero in Hiroshima, the Bolshoi Ballet, China Beach, and the White House kitchen.
The nine things in life that I am most proud of are my children: Nick, Molly, and Tim, and my grandchildren: Boone, Sebastian, Judah, Olive, Willow, and Sullivan.
Life has been very good to me indeed!

Sunday, June 4, 2017

Trump Gets Stupid(er)

by Pa RockCitizen Journalist

by Pa RockCitizen Journalist

I
just climbed out of the car following a long drive home from Kansas
City, and during the several hours on the road I had time to compose, in
my head, musings for today's posting. By the time I reached home,
my thoughts were tightly organized and damned near grandiloquent. Now,
however, as they finally spill onto the keyboard, all of that righteous
indignation may fizzle and frazzle in the process.

I hope not.

Let me begin here:

I
am sick and tired of having to be ashamed of our country's leaders.
From Nixon's ever-expanding web of deceit and revenge known as
"Watergate, through Reagan's secret sale of arms to Iran to
surreptitiously fund revolutionary activity in Central America, to Bill
Clinton's barely legal, frat boy dalliance with a White House intern,
to George W. Bush's misdirected war in the Middle East, I have shuddered
in disbelief for far too long as the American presidency gets dragged
through the mud by sleazeball politicians whose personal and political
ambitions seldom match the needs and desires of the people they were
elected to lead.

Thank heaven we had an eight-year
respite from the madness with the election of Barack Obama, an
individual of honor and integrity, a leader respected around the globe
by individuals yearning for fairness and freedom as they struggle to
conduct their lives in a world that is all too often controlled by
gangsters and greed-heads.

But the pendulum has swung
back toward intolerance again, and the United States now finds itself
entering the era of Trump, a man who, with barely four months in office,
has offended our allies, enriched his family and friends, weakened
protections for the poor and suffering, and emboldened the worst
elements of American society. The word "Orwellian" seems grotesquely
inadequate to describe the world being created by Donald Trump and his
rich, uncaring cronies.

My initial plan was to use this
posting to go off on Trump's absurd withdrawal of the United States from
the Paris Climate Accord, a decision that will ultimately hurt all
Americans as well as American businesses. But Trump was stirring his
base with bravado and bullshit, and managed to make "climate change"
sound like a liberal conspiracy to people who can't count past ten
without taking off their shoes.

To criticize Trump,
however, speed is of the essence. Before I could begin banging out my
thoughts on this egregious betrayal of the planet and the future
generations who will try to inhabit it, Trump had shot off on another
outrageous tangent, one that also merits painful examination.

Yesterday
Great Britain suffered its second terrorist attack in two weeks - and
its third in three months - with the massacre that occurred on London
Bridge. Donald Trump, being the consummate narcissist, sprang to his Twitter
account and quickly tried to make the whole thing about him - in
particular about how the American courts are thwarting his will by
blocking his travel (Muslim) ban. If the United States of America
would give him complete power over travel and immigration, our country
would never have to worry about terrorism again - or personal liberties.

Except,
of course, that isn't true because a big crop of terrorists already
reside and operate in America - only they are by-and-large not
Muslims. Over the past two weeks two outrageous incidents occurred in
this country, both inspired by racist beliefs and both committed by
people who could have very likely been Trump supporters. Trump, or more
likely his staff, acknowledged one of the incidents a couple of days
after it occurred, though the tweet bearing the acknowledgment
did not use the word "terrorism," and the second incident apparently
drew no White House notice whatsoever. Obviously, it is only terrorism
if Muslims are the perpetrators.

The first incident happened
two weeks ago when a madman in Portland, Oregon, was interrupted in his
loud harangue of two Muslim women by three men who sought to quiet him
and protect the women. The mouthy provocateur pulled a knife and
stabbed all three good Samaritans, killing two and severely injuring the
third. Call it what you will Donald, but a hate crime inspired by
religious intolerance that results in murder is terrorism by almost
anyone's definition. And in this case the terrorist was a white U.S.
citizen who had not entered the country as an adult. He was born here
and lived here - and he resided in a shell of ignorance and intolerance
that was undoubtedly formed by listening to pundits and politicians
whose goal was to make America hate again.

Last week in
Washington state, a young white man driving a large pick-up truck
intentionally ran down two American Indian men while shouting racial
slurs out of his truck window. One of the men died and the other was
hospitalized. Again, it doesn't take a Constitutional lawyer to
recognize this as a hate crime - one committed by a terrorist. The
terrorist, however, was not a Muslim and therefore did not merit the
tiniest of tweets from you.

Terrorism is already here,
Donald. It is all around us. Some of it may be inspired from holy
books like the Koran and the Bible, but most comes from hatred and
intolerance that is propagated and learned in society. Building walls
and enacting travel bans makes segments of society feel marginalized and
threatened - and those same types of acts serve to empower people who
feel their own places on the social and economic ladders are threatened
by these culturally diverse newcomers.

1 comment:

Don
said...

To suggest that the Donald operates with a plan misunderstands the depths of his ignorance, which is what makes him so very, very dangerous. He's been handed more power than he knew existed by supporters who are counting on him to redress the wrongs of a previous century. In the meantime, he subverts his own associates, communicates state secrets to dining-room companions and uses Twitter to settle political scores. What could possibly go wrong?